Decision
by X59
Summary: Ulrich decision to not date Sissi had less to do with her and more to do with her mother.


As the student body watched a fuming Sissi march towards her dorm room after being turned down by Ulrich, yet again, most of them just shook their heads. While many didn't understand why she kept trying, a fair amount of them thought that she could actually have a chance if she pulled back and stopped harassing Ulrich for a date. However most of Kadic thought that it was never going to happen, even if Ulrich wasn't obviously interested in Yumi, because Sissi had crossed the line with constant harassment about wanting Ulrich for herself.

While the majority opinion were correct in that Ulrich had chosen to never date Sissi, this decision was born out of meeting Sissi's mother. If his friends knew they would naturally assume that he once had a crush on Sissi's mom and was just trying to avoid the awkwardness by rejecting Sissi. If the student body knew many would subscribe to Odd's theory, a few would call him noble under the belief that he was preventing Sissi from wondering if she was a substitute, and others would have their own theories.

Any of these theories could have had merit if Ulrich had met Danielle Delmas when she was _alive_.

* * *

Though Ulrich and Sissi had met in preschool neither had really known the other on account of both believing in cooties. Despite registering that the other existed, it wasn't until third grade that they came to know each other. In a perfect world the Stern family would have met a joyful Delmas family. However the world isn't perfect and thus they encountered a family in grief and confusion due to Danielle Delmas's sudden disappearance.

When Ulrich is ten years old, a day of play in the forest turned into a nightmare when he stumbled upon a corpse. The sunken skin, the smell of rot, and the way the frozen face is contorted in pain makes him sick, make him want to hurl. He runs from the scene and an anonymous call leads a killer being brought to justice and a family that can grieve and come to terms with what they had lost.

Requests for the anonymous caller to reveal themselves remain unanswered and the Delmas family doesn't know who to thank. Ulrich was too freaked out about the encounter to even mention it to his parents and thus Gavin and Marie Stern blame the morbid tint to Ulrich's humor on his cousins.

Sissi is too lost in the overwhelming knowledge that her beloved mother was murdered and wanting to know who gave her justice that she doesn't notice Ulrich's subtle reactions to her comments. By the time she would Ulrich's composure betrays nothing and their friendship continued on with no issue until Sissi began to develop and starting looking more like her mother.

While Jean Pierre Delmas had always spoiled his daughter, it becomes worse when she starts looking like her mother. For his part Ulrich notices the vague resemblance with Sissi and the corpse he discovered with a detached sense of nausea. Thus their reactions to Sissi becoming entitled as a result of the spoiling aren't all that surprising in the long. Jean holds his daughter to a high standard to justify the spoiling and Ulrich rejects her advances which start few and far between.

What most people at Kadic forget is that Sissi didn't start relentless pursuing Ulrich until she had felt threatened by the competition. She saw the way Ulrich looked at Yumi, the way Yumi looked at him, and her growing sense of entitlement did the rest. Most see the distance between the social butterfly and the popular introvert as a result of Sissi's endlessly pursuing someone who just wanted her friendship. And while Sissi's pursuit was a factor, it wasn't the major one like everyone thought.

For all he found her pursuit annoying and the conflict with Xana made Ulrich exhausted, in the end it was Yumi that kept the distance between the two. If Odd knew he would assume it was Ulrich's feelings for Yumi that were to blame, ignorant of the truth. It was Yumi's rejections of his feelings that kept the distance.

The conflict with Xana had allowed Ulrich to make peace with finding the corpse of Danielle Delmas. It had allowed him to completely separate Sissi and her mother without any conflict. It had allowed Ulrich to stop thinking of the rotting corpse whose face was contorted in torment, when Sissi asked him on a date. The problem that Ulrich experienced was the possibly, no matter slim with his silence, that Sissi would discover that it was Ulrich who gave her family closure.

Sometimes Ulrich thinks Sissi wants to date him for the sake popularity, sometimes he believes that she has genuine feelings for him, and he occasionally wonders if Sissi wants to date him because he denies her. The idea that her genuine feelings could turn love over the fact he was the anonymous caller is the catalyst for his countless rejections of her.

He wonders if what he feels for Yumi is love which makes her rejection worse and the thought of denying someone else's love gives him pause. Thus it's preferable, more beneficial, to keep up the distance and push Sissi away while she possibly simply likes him over loving him.

* * *

_**Author's Note:**_ Born of my idly musing about creating a story with an Ulrich and Sissi pairing.


End file.
